Category: Landlords

Two Kinds of Deposit Protection Scheme

There are two kinds of scheme that landlords can use to register a rental security deposit: custodial and insured.

The main difference between them is simple. Under a custodial scheme, the money is held by the scheme provider; under an insured scheme, the landlord can keep the money in their own bank account during the tenancy.

A Failed Rental Reference Doesn’t Mean the End of the Road

It sounds confusing, but just because a tenant fails referencing or a credit check, it doesn’t necessarily mean that letting your property to them is a bad idea.

Finding the right tenants is the main challenge of being a private landlord, and referencing is the best tool at your disposal. But the Pass or Fail on your referencing report isn’t the be all and end all of whether an enquiry will turn out to be a good tenant.

Here we take you through how to interpret the result of your referencing report for high-risk tenants.

Many DIY landlords fear that they have forgotten to do something important. So we’ve made a checklist of legal landlord responsibilities you must perform when letting a property. The checklist ensures that you can easily check whether you are fully compliant with the law.

A section 21 notice is one of the most common ways for a tenant to be evicted from an assured shorthold tenancy in the UK. This one passage of housing law has had a huge impact on millions of landlords and tenants, but it has a troubled legal history. Here to take us through it is legal expert Tessa Shepperson. Continue reading “Section 21: Eviction, Possession & Notice to Quit”

Most residential lettings in England and Wales are arranged as an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST) – an agreement introduced by the Housing Act 1988, and subsequently updated by the Housing Act 1996. When an AST is established, the document everyone signs to agree terms is often referred to as an AST as well.